For those of you that do or did your own head porting, what kind of grinder do you use? Electric, Pneumatic? And do you use carbide bits, sandpaper rolls or stones?

I have a set of oval BBC 343059 castings that I would like to clean up and I am wondering the best way to go about it. Thanks in advance.
Keith

 

I used a craftsman electric to port with carbide cutters and an air die grinder to polish with sandpaper rolls and some sandpaper flap wheels. I used and electric so air pressure would not cause the cutter to cut to deep and used air to polish because I had more RPM control with air.

 

pneumatic with an adjustable regulator

 

http://www.momscarparts.com/?c=Engine&s=Grinding

that is for the carbide cutter bits and S&K speed sells the standard abrasives porting kit. It is easy and yeilds great results.....make sure you get the porting video and don't go by the forum rumors on how to do it. Most vendors want to scare the crap out of you making it seem like rocket science and everyone else tells you rumor mill info.

 

Where do you get the video?

 

The thing to really remember on an ls1 is to not change the shape of the port. Stick to that and your pretty good

 

i use a IR penumatic di grinder. i also have a few carbiet bits that i use to shape the ports the way i want. the main one i use is 6" long and is very handy for getting to the insides of the intake port. after i have them the way i want, i use standerd abrasive bits to smooth things out.

 

S&K had it there. It also mentions the coating process and several other tricks for better results. 6" carbide cutter is a must for the intake ports. The video was 30 bucks. Hot rod mag had an article on it where they netted 20rwhp with no prior experience porting heads.

As an issue of results. There is one member on here that did his own heads and when he finally got the money up to get a 'real' set of ported stage 2's.....he lost 1 rwhp! I'll let him respond if he wishes.